#746 The Bitcoin Difference w/ Aleks Svetski

Aleks Svetski is the cofounder and CEO of Amber, a mobile company focused on making exposure to Bitcoin and the new wave of digital assets as simple, low risk, and automated as possible. In this conversation, we discuss bitcoin, dollar cost averaging, El Salvador, NFTs, multi-chain world, and time preference. ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp ======================= Compass Mining is the world's first online marketplace for bitcoin mining hardware and hosting. Compass was founded with the goal of making it easy for everyone to mine bitcoin. Visit compassmining.io to start mining bitcoin today! ======================= Do you want a new job in the bitcoin and crypto industry? You should go apply for hundreds of open roles at http://www.pompcryptojobs.com or sign up for our training program at http://www.pompscryptocourse.com =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Alex Svetzky is the co-founder and CEO of Amber, a mobile company focused on making exposure to Bitcoin and the new wave of digital assets as simple, low-risk and automated as possible. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin, dollar-cost averaging, El Salvador, NFTs, multi-chain world, and time preference. I really enjoyed this conversation with Alex, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, let's talk about our sponsors. First up is LMAX Digital, the number one institutional crypto exchange. They offer clients the deepest pool of crypto liquidity on the planet, underscored by 100% uptime

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  track record through volatility spikes. They leverage LMAX Group's liquidity relationships and ultra-low latency technology. LMAX Digital is the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading and custodial services. If you've never heard of LMAX Digital, it's probably because you're not an institution. They have no retail, only institutions. They feature a central, limit-order book streaming spot Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash, all paired with US dollars, euro, and yen. LMAX Digital, they're secure, they're liquid, and they're trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp. Again, LMAXdigital.com/pomp. Next up is Compass Mining. Compass Mining is the world's largest marketplace for mining

• 1:26Anthony Pompliano?

  hardware and hosting. With Compass, everyone can mine Bitcoin. Their team makes it easy to start mining wherever you want, at home or in one of their 23 hosting facilities around the world. Through the Compass marketplace, retail miners can access mining hardware with similar prices and purchase plans as the world's largest mining companies. Compass miners own their machines, they choose whatever mining pool they want, and they mine directly to their own wallets. Miners who don't want to host their machines can order ASICs directly to their doorstep. Simple and low-cost hosting agreements, coupled with best-in-class customer service, are the reasons why Compass is the simplest and most popular way to mine Bitcoin.

• 2:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Start mining your own Bitcoin today by visiting compassmining.io. Again, compassmining.io. Go check them out and let me know what you think. Last but not least are my friends over at OKX. Crypto is all about democratization and freedom of choice, but many companies limit their offerings to centralized trading products. The crypto companies leading the pack in terms of innovation are those that extend access to the industry's cutting-edge products and services, bridging C5 and DeFi. If you're searching for a platform that reflects crypto's promise of a more open and less restrictive financial future, look no further than OKX. On OKX now, you can easily switch over to the new DeFi mode. Connect OKX's bespoke Web3 wallet via browser extension and start exploring opportunities

• 2:50Anthony Pompliano?

  at the bleeding edge of crypto. From the DeFi dashboard, you can monitor your portfolio of self-custodied assets across a range of blockchain networks and generate passive income from yield farming with top DeFi protocols. In the NFT marketplace, you can participate in exclusive drops and trade non-fungible tokens without secondary market fees. Meanwhile, the GameFi section is your portal to the latest and greatest in play-to-earn and blockchain gaming. Venture to the forefront of crypto innovation and connect with OKX DeFi today. Again, go check them out at OKX. That's where you can find OKX DeFi. All right, let's get into this episode. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:50Anthony Pompliano?

  We've got Alex from Amber who is here in studio. There he is, right there. Help us understand, what have you been working on with Amber first? Let's start there.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Ooh, okay, so we've been, we've been rolling out Amber Black, which is kind of the premium product, which, I don't know if I should say this yet, but I'll say it. We've got the buy the shift button about to be rolled out, so that'll be fun. So basically.

• 4:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Buy the shift?

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Like Peter Schiff?

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Basically.

• 4:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, that's a great way to start the conversation.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  The way it'll work is you'll go into the app and you'll you'll select the By the Schiff automation. You'll say, if Peter Schiff tweets about Bitcoin, buy me Bitcoin. So every time

• 4:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Dude, that is all time. That is so good. Every time Peter Schiff tweets about Bitcoin,

• 4:36Speaker 02

  it'll buy you Bitcoin. So we're gonna have like a whole army of stackers basically accumulating Bitcoin every time he opens his mouth.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  I wonder if you went back and like analyzed his past tweets, what the performance would be?

• 4:46Anthony Pompliano?

  People have. You've done well.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Seriously, you've done well.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  That's why we're doing it. That's exactly why we're doing it. It's like the ultimate contra indicator. So I thought we should productize this. So anyway, we're kind of working on that stuff. And then we've got, we've got a, something that I can't announce yet, but it's going to be a partnership with Bitcoin 2022. And we're going to help people acquire tickets by using the purchasing power of their Bitcoin without having, having to sell the Bitcoin. So can't announce it exactly yet, but that's going to be exciting. That'll be out in January, things crust.

• 5:19Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you, what do you think about Bitcoin right now in terms of like the high degree of volatility, right? So whether you're trying to create financial assets around it, we're trying to create technology to actually be able to buy more Bitcoin or whatever, like when you see all this volatility, do you think that people, we saw the Grayscale Bitcoin Investor Study shows that 55% or so of people who own Bitcoin today, first time they ever bought it was in 2021, which is pretty incredible statistic.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, wow.

• 5:44Anthony Pompliano?

  And again, maybe it's not exactly 55%, but directionally, it's a big percentage, right? How do you feel about the volatility in them? Like, it doesn't seem like that many of them are actually selling. They've weathered six drawdowns of over 20%, one over 50, one over 40, three over 30. Like, that's a lot of volatility for a single year and they're still here.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  I mean, it's, it's no different to Bitcoin's last 13 years anyway, right? Like, since when has Bitcoin not been volatile? Like, since when has, I mean, and the thing is, we just need to be careful about how we define volatility, right? Volatility in relationship to what? Because Bitcoin in its own sphere is actually not volatile. Bitcoin's the most unvolatile thing that exists today. You know, it, no one changes the code. Base like it takes four years to roll out Taproot like Bitcoin is the definition of anti volatile. But in the, I guess, the madness of the crowds, which is people discovering how to value this thing called Bitcoin.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  There is volatility in perception. There is volatility in subjective valuation. There is volatility in how people understand, appreciate and like form an opinion with respect to what Bitcoin is valued for themselves. So that's volatile. But Bitcoin itself, it's not volatile. Like it's perfectly stable. It's perfectly pristine. It's perfectly TikTok next block.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  And I think that's what people need to separate in their heads. So if you've got a bunch of mindless idiots running around selling their Bitcoin for basically fake paper money issued by, you know, central bankers. You should rejoice and you should acquire as much of that as you can, like, because if you stop for a minute and just step back.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Vol- like volatility is inherent to things like central banks. Because what do they do? They change their mind every day or every week, you know, first inflation is transient. Now it's not. You know, now it's because of people didn't get vaccinated or then tomorrow it's because of global climate change. Tomorrow it's because, you know, toxic masculinity, like that's volatility. Like volatility in opinion, volatility in policy, volatility in everything. Whereas Bitcoin is just, it's not, it's fundamentally not volatile. Bitcoin is the only heartbeat that exists in the world today that we can point to and know that it's there, hasn't changed. It's still what it is. It's backwards compatible for 13 years. That's perfection.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  And it's the relationship between a volatile world and a perfectly pristine manifestation of like a heartbeat. That connection is volatile and the alpha that we get out of it is we understand that Bitcoin is not volatile. And by the time the rest of the world understands it, then, you know. When the relationship between the old and the new is severed at the point where we don't need the old, then you don't notice the volatility anymore.

• 8:45Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you think about El Salvador and kind of plugging the entire country? And they're plugging their balance sheet in, they're plugging their citizens in, they're plugging in literally the debt market that they have into the Bitcoin network. They're plugging their payment system, their banking infrastructure, like they are literally taking their entire country and just plugging it into the Bitcoin network. How do you think about that?

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Well, I take the view, and I was with Max and Stacy a couple of weeks ago talking about this. I take the view that I don't buy into it being some altruistic thing that a president is doing for the people, right? Like, I don't think any status or any government person really, really, really, really, really cares that deeply. Maybe, maybe, you know, maybe Bitcoin kind of changed his opinion or his thing. But like, I kind of start from the premise that, look, the government and any bureaucrat is there to look after themselves first and foremost.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  So if we start with that premise, then what does Bitcoin represent? Well, Bitcoin represents a Plan B from being under the thumb of the US dollar and being under the thumb, basically having inflation exported to your country. Like, I went to El Salvador for the first time before any of the things came into effect. And one thing I actually noticed was El Salvador is poorer than places like Colombia and Brazil, but the cost of living there is actually higher because it's dollarized. So you've got this country that just can't get ahead. So they need an alternative option. So even if it wasn't for helping the people and some altruistic view, it is a necessary

• 10:27Speaker 02

  step for a small country like that in order to gain theoretically position themselves somewhere other than being under the thumb, right? So if then we extend it, it's like some people are like, oh, Abukel is a dictator and whatever. I'm like, well, better a dictator on a Bitcoin standard than a... The...

• 10:50Speaker 02

  The presentation or the perception of a non dictator but being an authoritarian state, which is really what the West is becoming, right? Australia, I mean, Australia is just one of those perfect examples, right? Completely lost its mind, calls itself a democracy, has the capacity to print its own money, therefore perpetuate an economic fraud, therefore remove what the most important thing that money does in a society is, remove economic consequence. Like, money exists, and this is something that I've started recently talking about, is like, what's Bitcoin's most important impact on the world, impact on society? It is the reintroduction of economic consequence.

• 11:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, explain that.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  What that means is, what money exists to do is to tell you whether what you've done is right or wrong. It helps you make value judgments, and value judgments are how we navigate the world. If we can make appropriate value judgments, we can make better decisions and we can make progress. And on the contrary, if we can't make appropriate value judgments, we don't know what the hell we're doing. We're just taking action and we're making mistakes and we think, you know, what we're doing is right. So, you know, people will go and eat sugar, or they'll jump off a cliff, or they'll do whatever, right? So money acts as the mechanism to tell you, hey, you did good or you did bad. Now, when the money is broken, and when you can play games and you can play shenanigans

• 12:12Speaker 02

  with the money, like, hey, let's shut down the entire world economy, and then, oh, let's just add a few digits to the thing, and hey, we had economic growth. What you've done is you've removed the economic consequence on paper, and then you've fooled yourself into believing what's on paper is actually accurate, when in reality, people have lost their jobs, their businesses, their livelihoods, and all this sort of destruction that's happened. So what Bitcoin does is, it actually reintroduces economic consequence to all action, whether at the micro level, at the individual, all the way through to the macro level, whether institution, company, country, or whatever. And that is what rebalances behavior, and that's what then filters through. That's the genesis of Bitcoin fixes this, is you can't, you can't lie.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  And you can't lie on a piece of paper and then try and make it true and cover it up in the real world. And then in the real world, the damage is paid for by the people who had no ability to make that decision. So you can't play that game of moral hazard anymore.

• 13:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you think about individuals trying to onboard into this system or use this system, what are the big challenges that you see from user experiences, user interfaces, the various platforms that are out there?

• 13:22Speaker 02

  The biggest challenge, hands down, is the emergence of crypto. That is the biggest challenge. Like, that is the biggest distraction to Bitcoin on the face of the planet. In some ways, you know, sometimes I've said, look, crypto is good in the sense that, you know, it confuses the lemmings away and it kind of gives fire, uh, cover to Bitcoin so that Bitcoin can keep doing its thing and the regulators can go and, you know, focus their time on that. But in reality, like, what crypto represents, and this is why I'm on such a crusade against it, is that it represents a distraction away from Bitcoin that is basically a recreation of the existing system. Like, WorldCoin was a perfect example. Like, when that came out with that, the master Sam Altman is like, oh yeah, we should do WorldCoin. And, you know, I remember it's like, one coin for everybody on the planet. And then the founders

• 14:06Speaker 02

  get 10% and the investors get 10%. It's like, alright, so wait a minute. Like, we've just recreated the Federal Reserve. And then, hey, Mr. Pleb, you know, for your one coin, we'll take, you know, your iris and we'll scan your biometrics so that way, you know, we completely own you. So it's like, crypto exists to distract people away from what Bitcoin is, which is freedom money. Like, literally what you're wearing. Like, what William Wallace and all these great figures throughout history fought for, which is the sovereignty of the individual, the right for the individual to own themselves, own the product of their labor and be who they are. So for me, the biggest threat at the moment is all the confusion in there because you get people every day.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  They think they're buying crypto to like, you know, stick a finger to the, to the man, right? But all they're doing is they're jumping from the frying pan into the fire because all they're doing is they're putting their monetary essence, their energy into another wannabe oligarch or another wannabe institution that is going to issue their own money. So, so like, what have you done?

• 15:11Anthony Pompliano?

  What about the assets that are not trying to be money that are in crypto? So let's, uh, let's say, um, what's like the most egregious, like art, right? So like, NFT is probably a good example. I don't think anyone, and again, maybe there's some crazy person out there, but I don't think anyone would say, hey, the NFTs are trying to be a currency. They're trying to be a store of value from a, uh, accomplish the same goals as Bitcoin, right? I think that they probably would be the first ones to say like, this has nothing to do with Bitcoin. This, they don't try to use like what the affinity type scam, right? Where they're like, oh, it's a better Bitcoin or anything like that. Um, and so they're essentially taking the analog assets, which is art, whether you like art or not, whatever you know what art is, uh, and they're digitizing it. How do you look at something that is very obviously looking at three things? Bitcoin is trying to be a store of value, seems

• 15:56Anthony Pompliano?

  to be doing a pretty good job of that. Trying to be a medium of exchange, seems to be doing a pretty good job of that and eventually be a unit of account as well, right? Kind of meet the criteria for true money. Uh, NFTs, if you were to ask somebody, are trying to accomplish something and they wouldn't mention any of those three things, right? Nobody's going to say, uh, did you, how many crypto punks does this cost, right? Type thing. So how do you think about those two things?

• 16:17Speaker 02

  They are trying to do the store of value part, but let, let me, let me challenge you then on NFTs. So, so let's just separate the art from the digital signature, right? Cause, cause what is an NFT? It's a digital signature, right?

• 16:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  I think that

• 16:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Allegedly.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Well, allegedly, right? Yeah. So, um, I, I would suggest that if you like somebody's art, you send them some Bitcoin. Like the artist can literally get paid in Bitcoin, can literally be supported in Bitcoin, can literally like, the problem that the artists say they have, which is I can't sell my artwork, you know, openly, you know, without people being able to pay me. Like it was sold by Bitcoin 13 years ago. So, so you can slap a QR code and you can, you know, get your thing. If you want to have an authenticity, you can PGP sign, you know, a piece and that, that's been there, like has always existed. What I think NFTs are doing, which is really dangerous is it's creating illiquid,

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Um, horizontal markets where the first one, maybe two people to flip an NFT will make a lot of money. But the second or third person holding it is going to be holding a digital signature that's worthless. Over a JPEG that's, you know, everybody else has copied because they don't really care about the art. They care about the signature that apparently proves that that piece of art is unique. So, so then, so what they're doing is like, it's creating a market of not art anymore. It's creating a market of trying to be the first to flip the next digital signature associated with some gimmicky piece of art. And I think what it's doing is it's actually taking away from the artists.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Because there's actually really good artists out there who, instead of them focusing on putting their effort, their energy, their, their passion into a beautiful piece of art. They're going and creating some gimmicky stupid JPEG, slapping the word NFT on it. Flipping it to someone for a bunch of money. That person who buys it then is like, shit, I better flip it to somebody else so that I can see if I can make a profit. But as more and more NFTs get created, what you do is you create this horizontal market. Where there's no liquidity in each one. So the more NFTs that come out, the less liquid the market becomes. The more stretched it becomes, the less chance there is of flipping the NFT that you bought six months ago because the new one is hot.

• 18:28Anthony Pompliano?

  So I want to take, uh, let me use a nuanced version of this, right? Which I think gets more at the issue. Uh, NFL tickets or NBA tickets. If I go today and I buy a ticket from, uh, let's say the Dallas Mavericks, right? Mark Cuban has obviously, uh, been bullish on crypto, uh, Bitcoin. There's been plenty of, uh, kind of engagements where he's had with Bitcoiners. He says, hey, I'm going to sell my Dallas Mavericks tickets. I'm gonna sell it for 50 bucks. And I buy it. They make $50 off that purchase right primary sale. If I then turn around and I sell it to my brother for a hundred, they make nothing. If he turns around, he sells it to John for 200, they make nothing. And then John walks into the game. So there was technically $350 worth of economic transactions, but they only made $50 off the first primary sale. If they now say, hey, we're going to create these into non-fungible assets, right?

• 19:13Anthony Pompliano?

  So forget tokens for a second, just something where we can track where it goes. And when I sell it to him for a hundred, they get 10%. Or so they got $50 off the primary sale, they get $10 off of the first secondary sale, then he sells it, they get another $20, 10% of the secondary sale. So now, instead of making $50, they've made $80. John goes into the game. Again, I don't think that they're arguing it replaces Bitcoin. I definitely don't think they're saying it's a store of value. I don't think they're saying it's a unit of account or even a medium of exchange. All they're trying to get at, and whether they're doing a good job or not, is they're trying to get at, how do we take something that has complete dislocation, a primary and a secondary market? Today, they go after the secondary market. They do not like the secondary market because there's all these transactions that happen. They make no money. But now they actually align the incentives with the team and the secondary market.

• 19:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Do we look at that as, and by the way, I don't think most people actually in those situations, are they decentralized? Right? I think that's another piece of it.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you.

• 20:03Anthony Pompliano?

  So if, if they were to come out and say, it's not decentralized at all. All we're trying to do is we're trying to get at this technology that allows it more efficiently. Doesn't even mean it's the only way to do it, just more efficiently be able to take 10% of every single secondary transaction. We by no means are decentralized. All we are trying to do is just monetize the secondary market. Is it, is that an easier way to wrap our heads around like other applications of this technology? Or is it the use of things like decentralized? When they say, hey, it's a decentralized way to do it, that's where Bitcoiners, I hear a lot of Bitcoiners yell and scream like, it's not decentralized. And that seems to be like a huge sticking point. Is that your read as well?

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Okay, so, so let's come back to this technology. What do you mean by, is this an application of this technology? What does that mean?

• 20:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so there's a whole bunch of different ways to do it, right? And I think that part of the beauty, or really the, the main point of proof of work is that it's truly decentralized. I don't think anyone in the world can look at the Bitcoin blockchain, the proof of work system, the relationship between miners, nodes, right? And say, this is not decentralized. Now, there's a whole bunch of other people who have different ways of doing it, either today or in the future, in terms of building consensus. And they say it's decentralized. I think that's where there's a huge debate. What is actually decentralized? What is not? But I don't think anyone looks at Bitcoin and says, this is not decentralized. My point is, any of the other uses that they want to do in terms of building consensus, I don't care. There's proof of stake, there's proof of time, there's delegated proof of, I mean, there's like a million of these things now, right?

• 21:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think most Bitcoiners will go and say, those are all inferior ways to get consensus because ultimately you need proof of work. You need a fully decentralized system. But if they just say, look, actually, we don't want to be decentralized. We want speed and efficiency and we're nearly centralized, if not mostly centralized, or we are just centralized. It almost feels like then you're saying like, no, you need decentralization to separate kind of a true store of value that can't be manipulated, can't be controlled, can't be debased. And then you're like, oh, this is like database technology.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Well, so that's what we should call it. So decentralization is not a, is not an end, it's a means to an end.

• 22:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I agree with that.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so, and, and the means is what? It's, it's censorship resistance, right? So it's, it's the inability for anyone to mess with something.

• 22:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  And that really only has one use case. Like, money is the, the foundation of all human civilization. You can't have a civilization without the capacity of human beings to store the product of their labor and then exchange it amongst each other. So, so, so that's a non-starter. So if we start there, then what we should agree on is that, hey, if money is that important, we should place money into the realm of the physical laws of the universe, right? Can, you know, I don't know, Pomp, you're pretty cool, but like, can you change the speed of light?

• 22:41Anthony Pompliano?

  I wish.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, I mean, can you guys like add some more time to your day? No, you can't. So, so time, speed of light.

• 22:48Anthony Pompliano?

  John knows magic.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  You know, like you, you can't change those things. So, so, so what, what Bitcoin does is it's for the first time in history, it places money in the realm of physics. So then it's out of all of our hands. And then, then we have a level playing field. People talk about equality of opportunity. Like, it's a nice dream, but it's a, it's, it's nothing we can actually achieve in, on the planet because time, resources, energy, it's all unevenly distributed in the planet. But if we can have equality of opportunity over money, then that is a massive, massive, massive achievement. And that's what Bitcoin solves. All the other stuff, you know, for, for example, cryptocurrencies, that stuff is all just a distraction. So we can place that in the bucket of like confusing people out of Bitcoin, which is really, I think, negative, because the more people we move

• 23:32Speaker 02

  into Bitcoin, the sooner we actually move on to a world where we have equality of opportunity. So crypto in general is a distraction. Then if we look at applications of database technology with some sort of consensus mechanism.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  You know, maybe issuing tickets for a game or something like that, that's fine, but it shouldn't be, it shouldn't be classified in the same, I guess.

• 23:57Anthony Pompliano?

  So here's, here's what I'm getting at. It sounds like you agree is Bitcoin is money, right? And it's a better money. It's a decentralized, digital, programmatic monetary policy driven money that nobody can screw with, right? And there's immense value to that. There are other applications of other things that there's an entire spectrum of pretty clever technical innovations all the way down to like, you literally just took a database and put a website up and, you know, called it something else, right? And so I think that ultimately ends up being a huge differentiator. I agree with you in terms of Bitcoin is the money of the future, digital currency, whatever. There's other stuff. What I think ends up being the part where people get confused is that really, and it's coming from the mainstream media, they lump it all together, right? And they say like,

• 24:41Anthony Pompliano?

  hey, Joe's trying to solve ticketing, John, you're doing art, you're doing Bitcoin, and Pomp, you created some like electronic medical health records, right? And like, oh yeah, they're all competing with each other. Like, if this was just, forget crypto blockchain, any of that stuff. If we were just in the technology world, like old school Silicon Valley 10 years ago, and you said, wait a minute, he's doing tickets, you're doing art, you're doing money, and you're doing electronic healthcare records, like literally, you're in the sports world, right? You're in the art market, you're in the finance market, and you're in the medical field. Like, they're not even related at all. But it's this lumping of it together that I think causes more confusion than anything, because what I've found is that most people, they don't want to compete with each other, right? And that, and that's like a weird thing because no one wants to talk about

• 25:26Anthony Pompliano?

  it. But the actual builders, they're like, dude, like, you know, I own X asset, let's say Bitcoin, for example, I'm building electronic medical health records. All I'm trying to figure out is what's the best database technology? And maybe they're right, maybe they're not, who knows? But when the media lumps them all together, then people are like, well, this stuff seems weird. Like, which one's going to go up more, right?

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, the media is a big problem. I think, I think there's also a bunch of players in the market that have taken advantage of the Bitcoin narrative and the crypto narrative to use, you know, to kind of, I guess strategically lump themselves in the same place so they can gain some sort of advantage from it. So, so I think, you know, whilst, yes, the media. Is the media like, I mean, basically I have a simple heuristic in life, which is anything the media says, just do the opposite and you'll do fine. And that's like, I mean,

• 26:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Buy the shift button.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 26:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Short the media.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, like maybe, maybe we should like just do a button for like whatever. Every time the media like mentions Bitcoin, it just buys you some Bitcoin instead. Like, cause like, I don't know. It's just if there was ever a contra indicator or contra signal that it's them. But yeah, I just think we need to, um,

• 26:42Speaker 02

  we need to, when we're talking about Bitcoin, we, we need to talk about Bitcoin as its own thing. And we need to reclassify like Bitcoin is not a cryptocurrency. Like Bitcoin is perfect money. A cryptocurrency is the attempt to issue private money under your own governance system, which is more like a nation state, which is more like fiat. So cryptocurrency that have much more in common with the Federal Reserve, which is a private entity issuing its own money. Ethereum is like the Federal Reserve, a private entity issuing its own money. So Solana, so all these other things. And then the attempt to shoehorn Bitcoin like technology into the saying, the selling of tickets, then is another question in and of itself, or whatever other, you know, applications of

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Bitcoin like technology, you know, may exist. I actually think that that's a, like, again, my personal opinion is that, um, that is chasing a red herring. Like, I think what we should be thinking about doing is using kind of like what Jack's doing with LDK and Spiral and everything is like, how do we use the Bitcoin stack to reimagine the issuance of tickets, reimagine the, the storage of records, use, you know, the ingredients that Bitcoin gives us, you know, immutability, the capacity to hash to something, hash time lock contracts, multi signature, you know, lightning, et cetera. Like what the guys at Impervious are doing, for example, like, how can we abstract elements of Bitcoin

• 28:09Speaker 02

  to reimagine how we provide products and services as private businesses? Because that's where the value is. You want to invest in good entrepreneurs and private businesses that are building stuff, not trying to run their own economies. And that's where I think there's a, there's a big important nuance there.

• 28:24Anthony Pompliano?

  What questions do you guys have?

• 28:27Speaker 03

  Go ahead.

• 28:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, so one of the things I think has immense value is that kind of transactional ticket and be able to capture the secondary market sale on NFTs or just really any technology like that. Do you see value in that?

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Not on an open platform because an open platform like an open blockchain can't scale for that. So you do that, you build it with AWS and you issue the tickets. Like, so I bought a Jordan Peterson ticket the other day and on the app, the AXS app, I can sell the ticket back to AXS. So I can sell it to someone else. I can transfer the ticket. You can do that. Like Bitcoin 2022 sells their tickets through Tixar and through Tixar I can sell it to somebody and then I can just change the name on the thing. Like that can all be done already. We don't need NFTs for that. You don't need any of that sort of stuff for that because each digital item on a private database issued by a company has a unique identifier on it already. Like you don't need to do that on a on a open

• 29:24Speaker 02

  platform because the open platform can't scale for that. So basically the open platform will clog up anyway. It'll create expense that doesn't need to be there. And at the end of the day, its maximum capacity is probably one conference anyway. So may as well just issue the damn conference on a private company database whose goal it is to provide this service. Do away with all the other crap. Like it's just unnecessary.

• 29:49Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a great way of looking at it.

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. So you were talking earlier about some of the other cryptos, right? Relative to Bitcoin and saying how, you know, it's not always a good thing for people coming into the space to see some of those first and Bitcoin. But relative to Bitcoin specifically and when it comes to Bitcoiners, what is the number one thing in your mind that that people can be doing to increase the adoption of this?

• 30:09Speaker 02

  I actually think we need to get our heads away from increasing adoption. And so I did a whole piece a little while ago called selective adoption versus mass adoption. I think mass adoption is a scam. I don't think we need mass adoption. If you go back and look at any transformative revolutionary technology or moment or phenomenon throughout history, it was selectively adopted in the beginning by the 1% of people who could reimagine and rethink the way the world might function, not by the masses. This has come last, like so, so they they are the laggards, they are the the people who come later. And like the the the classic cliche example is, you know, Henry Ford saying, if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses, right? So so when you're reinventing something, particularly like a zero to one moment,

• 30:53Speaker 02

  you don't care what the herd says. So what you do is Bitcoin is fundamentally different and incompatible with anything that came before it. Incompatible with gold, like I can't, you know, send Bitcoin on the gold network. It doesn't exist, right? You can't send gold on the Bitcoin network. So so it's incompatible. It's incompatible with fiat, like they they just don't work together. You have to move from one world into the other. So so for me, what I'm thinking about is kind of the um, the example of what you guys are wearing on your shirt with William Wallace, um, well, what pump is, I don't know what the hell you got. Okay, okay. Um, so so, you know, the the Scotsman or the three hundred is a great example is like, how do we recruit more of the three hundred? Not the Arcadians who are like

• 31:38Speaker 02

  the farmers and the and the blacksmiths, because we're going into what I believe is going to be the most pivotal moment in human history that we've had maybe since the discovery of fire, like this is how important Bitcoin is, because for the first time in history, the metaphysical idea of money is going to fuse with physical human action, like and and when we do that, when you can't fake, um, you know, the the consequence of your actions anymore, what ends up happening is all human action starts to correct. You you can't lie anymore, like you can't just say, oh, yeah, you know, well, we locked down everyone, but it's okay. The the economy is fine because we printed some money like people are fucking starving now. So you you need to, you need to

• 32:21Speaker 02

  adapt your behavior to reality. You you stop jumping off a cliff, right? So so so coming back to um, what I was saying there about fuck, I went on a mad rant.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Help me out here. What was the thing just before that?

• 32:37Anthony Pompliano?

  So the entire idea, I think what you're trying to get at here is as more and more people start to help drive adoption.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Right. Oh, good.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  It was the selective adoption piece.

• 32:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, good.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  So what we need is the signal to remain pure and clear so that we can attract people who are like the 300. Because that's who we need to understand Bitcoin. So we need to get like the Tucker Carlson's on like, you know, what Sailor did with him the other day was magnificent. We need to get those kind of people into Bitcoin. We need to forget about trying to do the mass adoption thing. Because Roger Ver is an example of someone who wanted mass adoption for Bitcoin, and he was willing to change Bitcoin and its principles to get mass adoption. Because in his mind, mass adoption meant Bitcoin's a payments network. I mean, I bought Bitcoin when it was a payments network. So that means to get mass adoption, we need to basically recreate PayPal.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  And what happened was he got booted off and, you know, he forked off and now he's got his, you know, BCH shitcoin, which is worth nothing. So what we need to do is we need to maintain the integrity of the message and be basically like a communication node for Bitcoin that is pure. Which is, this is what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin will not deviate from this, and this is why it's important. And that's the signal we need to attract other, what, you know, what I've started calling remnants, which is inspired by the Isaiah's Job article from 1930s, which is by like Ayn Rand and Rothbard and all of that. It's like, we need to attract remnants to us. So that is going to come from clarity, from truth and from integrity, not from trying to dilute the message of Bitcoin

• 34:10Speaker 02

  so that we can make it more appealing to the sheep who are not going to get it in the first place.

• 34:13Speaker 03

  So I guess my question off of that would be, I think most people assume that that that tangles with the give and take of of adoption means that there's acceleration in price, there's acceleration in people using the technology, all this kind of stuff. Your way of saying we need to go slower and make sure everyone understands it at a fundamental level and it doesn't change is a slower way to do that, right? And it would impact on the opposite side. So how do you think about that relative to not only the price for sure, but also like Bitcoin becoming a unit of account, Bitcoin becoming potentially a global reserve currency? Like, how do you think about the timeline of those things relative to your adoption pattern?

• 34:45Speaker 02

  Well, we keep trying to impose our.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Individual generational timelines on this and Bitcoin's going to be here for the next 10,000 years. Bitcoin's going to outlive you, me, our families, all that sort of stuff. It's going to be here for 10,000 years. So we need to start thinking about it in that timeframe. Now, we don't actually have to do much to convince people. So an article I wrote last year was called Bitcoin and lockdowns and I put together a framework of understanding Bitcoin adoption, not through the lens of price going up or anything, but through the lens of Bitcoin moving from a luxury to a necessity. So what happens is Bitcoin doesn't need to change, or we don't need to talk about Bitcoin too much. We just need to remain pure on what it is. And what will

• 35:31Speaker 02

  happen is as the existing system breaks down and people run for their lives, looking to kind of save their wealth or save themselves, like necessity is the mother of all change. And what will happen is they'll come to the only thing that is non volatile, which is Bitcoin. So we don't actually have to drive the price of Bitcoin up. The collapse of the clown world simulation around us will drive everything to Bitcoin. So we don't actually have to do anything. What we need to do is maintain pure signal, maintain integrity and maintain this impenetrable fortress that doesn't change. So we're the castle, we're the promised land. And what happens is the people find the promised land because they have to, not because we're waving a flag saying, hey, we're the promised land, come here. Like, this is the promised

• 36:16Speaker 02

  land. They'll come here.

• 36:18Anthony Pompliano?

  We've got to wrap up, unfortunately. Where can we send people to find Amber? Or where do you want to send them?

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Okay, easy amber.app is Amber.

• 36:29Anthony Pompliano?

  And just give us kind of the 30 seconds on what they can do if they go download the app.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  Okay, best accumulation app in the world. You can buy the shift, you can order by the dip, you can stack daily, weekly, monthly, whatever. And then soon enough, you'll be able to use the Bitcoin purchasing power you have without having to sell your Bitcoin to acquire Bitcoin products and services.

• 36:47Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a great pitch. I'm an investor in the business. I love it. Thank you so much. Keep going. I love the buy the shift. That's freaking great. That might be one of my favorites that I've ever heard.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  We need to put together a whole, I'm going to do a hashtag with it. And then we just like, buy the shift every day.

• 37:03Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Thank you so much for coming.